Reed boat

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Urus reed boat on Lake Titicaca
Totoras in Chiclayo
The ABORA IV in the caldera of Santorini
Wood transport on reed boats, Lake Tana , Ethiopia

A reed boat is a boat made mostly of reeds . They are available with and without a sail .

The very porous structure of the grass used gives the material good buoyancy. Over time, however, the grass also draws water, so the fishermen set up their boats to dry.

To build a boat out of grass, several stalks are tied together into a bundle. At least two or three bundles are then formed together to form the actual boat.

The Lake Titicaca is today with special reed boats from Totora busy. There, some families of the Aymara Indians still master the art of making larger reed boats that are suitable for long-distance travel. Totora boats can also be found on the Peruvian Pacific coast, where these boats, called ' Caballitos de Totora ', are still used for fishing in the area of ​​the cities of Huanchaco and Puno .

In Europe , too, an age-old tradition of making and using reed boats has been preserved in Sardinia in the form of the 'Fassoni' up to the present day. Their small boats made of marsh grass were also used for fishing, but are now also used for races in front of an audience for folkloric and tourist reasons. The ancient illustration of a large Sardinian reed boat with a mast construction has been preserved in the Ipogeo di San Salvatore .

Thor Heyerdahl constructed two ships from papyrus , one from Berdi based on old models. The project group for prehistoric seafaring also constructed some reed ships. In addition to his famous reed boats Ra I, Ra II and the Tigris , there have also been other, less well-known reed boat buildings and expeditions, mainly for experimental research into the possibility of prehistoric transoceanic contacts.

In 1969 Gene Savoy sailed with the rush raft "Feather serpent" (Feathered Snake, i.e. Quetzalcoatl ) from Peru to Panama . Kitín Muñoz traveled in 1988 with his reed ship “Uru” and in 1999 with the 30 m long “Mata Rangi II” from Manta (Ecuador) to the Marquesas . In 2000 and 2003 Phil Buck drove the “Viracocha I” and “Viracocha II” from northern Chile to Easter Island . Alexej Vranich built a reed boat on Lake Titicaca in 2002 and used it to transport a 9-ton stone block lengthways across the lake, and John Blashford-Snell was repeatedly on the move in the Amazon region with the “Kota Mama II” from 1999 onwards .

With the help of the "Experimental Archeology" project group under Dominique Görlitz and Cornelia Lorenz, the ABORA I and ABORA II expeditions in the Mediterranean, the ABORA III expedition from New York eastwards across the Atlantic (expedition was canceled on the high seas ) and finally ABORA IV from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean . The aim of the expeditions was to prove that even complex sailing maneuvers can be carried out with reed boats and thus targeted trade trips were possible.

See also

Caballito de Totora

Individual evidence

  1. Tramedipensieri , under: Su Fassoni (accessed: May 5, 2020)
  2. ibid.
  3. ^ Dominique Görlitz , Die Nuraghen-Bauer als Seefahrer (accessed: May 5, 2020)
  4. Andreas Delor, Señor Kon-Tiki , Part 16, Heyerdahls Erben (accessed: May 5, 2020)